Mobike has delivered a promise publicly in recent days that it is going to retrieve at least 100,000 dockless bikes in Shanghai. Those bikes that can be repaired will be put back into service later, while the rest are to be taken apart and fully recycled.

Zhu Qian, the director of Public Relations in the Southeastern Region for Mobike, claims that the bikes that will be regained are mainly Lite1.0 versions from 2016, which no longer meet the requirements of the present market.

The retrieval process is simple. The maintenance staff can determine the condition of the bikes based on the data offered by Mobike’s software. They will find a code for every bicycle and its location in the app and then visit each bike to remove malfunctioning bikes. According to Mobike’s protocol on repair and recycling, with regard to those with little damage, the staff will have it fixed and replace them in high demand regions. However, if the bikes are seriously damaged or hold too many maintenance records, they will be dismantled and recycled in pieces.

“The information sent by the app is dynamic, so we need to confirm it on the scene,” one of themaintenance staff Mr. Chen says.“Fortunately, there is a satellite positioning chip inside every bike, the information provided by the bike itself is quite accurate, thus, we can be informed quickly and deal with the problem as soon as possible.”

According to Mr. Chen, Shanghai’s factory receives a daily maximum of around 5,000 bikes to repair, and he individually examines 200 or 300 bikes per day.

Zhu Qian confesses that Shanghai’s urban area is saturated. Given to the ban on putting more shared bicycles onto the streets, Mobike intends to balance the current number by managing the repair services and retrieving and replacing the broken ones.

According to Mobike, they have inspected 69,372 bikes already in Shanghai, of which 33,375 bikes have been recycled.